


manners

by extryn



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Dinner, Emotional Manipulation, Etiquette lessons, Food Porn, M/M, Manipulative Hannibal, Someone Help Will Graham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 01:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1409551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extryn/pseuds/extryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can feel Hannibal's eyes on him as he neatly carves through animal organs and fried flour. He smiles, and Hannibal smiles, and so does Jack Crawford who placed a forkful of food in his mouth and scraped the fork clean with his teeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	manners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deerstalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deerstalker/gifts), [glockenspielium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glockenspielium/gifts).



> just a quiiiick little fic because Hannibal is gorgeous and I am procrastinating writing what I actually need to write. Enjoy!
> 
> P.S. the tense jumps around a bit - I like to think Will analyses in the past tense, bear with me (:

Will stared into the door a little while longer than usual. He curled his fingers tight into a fist, their pallor stark against the paintwork, and then rapped once for courtesy. Shuffling in the hallway, uncomfortably exposed, he let himself in before Hannibal could reach the door - of course, he didn't mind; he smiled at Will and offered to take his jacket.

Tugging its fabric tighter around his shoulders, Will shook his head. 'What is it tonight, Doctor?'

Hannibal's lips stretched wider across his teeth, obliging. Warm. 'Hannibal, to begin with. There are no need for formalities here, Will.'

Will can't help his eyebrows raising. 'It's hard to believe you when I'm dining with my psychologist, a colleague, and my commanding officer.'

'A friend,' corrected Hannibal gently. 'Come, sit. To answer your first question, sweetbreads followed by braised eye fillet and sautéed spring vegetables. But the sauce, I'm afraid, is a secret recipe.'

'It always makes me wonder when you learnt to cook so well,' Will says, stepping forward as instructed. The office was warm, but his body shuddered with chills, his sweat drew into beads, hidden by the curls across his forehead.

Hannibal pulled up a chair for him, Will taking it with a customary nod and smile and Jack raising a hand in greeting. Hannibal laid a napkin across his lap and pushed the chair in, wedged Will's chest uncomfortably close to the table edge. Jack's smile followed his eyes; polite, uncertain.

'How are the dogs? Bet they're sorry to miss out on this feast,' Jack Crawford rumbled, taking a gulp of wine disguised as a connoisseur's sip.

Hannibal slips a teatowel over his forearm, long fingers curling around the neck of a wine bottle. Will watches; the dark glass, his distorted reflection bending along its edge, the alcohol as it tumbles into his glass and froths at the side, the little flick of Hannibal's wrist keeping the sediment on the rim of the bottle and not in Will's drink.

Jack gives a smirk, and Will says, 'They really prefer the dog biscuits. They're very good.'

'And is Miss Bloom joining us?' Hannibal prompts, swirling wine in his glass. It teases at the rim of the glass, only to fall back into deep, turgid red. It falls, it falls, Hannibal swirls it again.

'Ah, only for the main course, she's got some paperwork to finish,' Jack said.

 

***

 

Hannibal brings out appetizers first; the wine more of a crimson, entrapping light like the gaps between the stars, but the cranberry jus a festive, bubbled magenta. It's warm to the touch on his plate, the china crisp and clean from the dishwasher. Will can hear it squeak a little when he pokes the meat with his fork.

He can feel Hannibal's eyes on him as he neatly carves through animal organs and fried flour. He smiles, and Hannibal smiles, and so does Jack Crawford who placed a forkful of food in his mouth and scraped the fork clean with his teeth.

'Which order is it?' says Jack, swallowing his food. He holds up a knife thoughtfully.

'As we fill from the inside out, we consume from the outside in,' muses Hannibal. He shifts a piece of meat on his fork so as to catch the light, let the cranberry drip, drip, into his mouth before the plate.

Will set down his knife and picked up the one next to it. 'I was never much for table manners.'

'It's very easy, Will,' Hannibal says. 'Here.'

Hannibal eases his chair back, quiet against the wooden floor. He walks to Will and rests a hand over his.

His hand is cool, Will realises, cool on Will's warm and sweat-dampened flesh. It curls around Will's fingers like a child's hands on the joints of a doll and manipulates his thumb, his forefinger. He placed them delicately on the knife like a surgeon holds his scalpel.

Heat radiates off him, from Hannibal's shoulder to Will's neck, to his chest wedged between the back of his chair and the edge of the wooden table.

'Now,' Hannibal breathes, a whisper trapped in the rough tone of someone who's used their voice all day, 'Press firmly, but not so tight others would see your knuckles.'

Will almost drops the knife.

Jack smiles serenely and chews with his eyes viewing them, disengaged, and Will doesn't understand _how_. He doesn't understand this bubble of intimacy, this sudden divide Hannibal has conjured between their entwined fingers and bodies, and the chair, and the placemat separating him and Jack Crawford.

Hannibal's thumb caresses along his left wrist, arm snaking around the back of Will's shoulders, his neck, where a mother would hold her pups. It nudges Will's fingers awkwardly around his fork, pressing their knuckles and muscles into shapes and figures that mean something to him. His language.

He breathed, and the warmth sunk through Will's hair to his head, through darkness, to his eyes and the taste of the air, thick with fats and cranberry.

Gentle pressure. Will takes Jack's smile and plasters it across his own face, a poltergeist in the mirror. Hannibal's hands slice and dissect with precise, decisive strokes. Between their hands, they had produced a small square, pink and stained with juice and the softer innards spilling across the warmed prongs of the fork.

Hannibal grips his wrist firmly and raises the piece to Will's mouth.

He ate it, slow, without enough time to decide where it should go in his mouth, around his teeth, without enough time to _translate_. He takes too long to decipher the word and it's already slipped off the tip of his tongue.

'It's delicious,' says Jack Crawford.

'It's…' Will said, and didn't finish.

 


End file.
